Italy’s favorite word seems to be “aspetta.”  Wait.  And I have been.  At first, patiently, and then not so patiently, and now it’s almost laughable.  My internet was fixed on Friday, hurrah!  And it lasted a whole 2.5 days.  Then the ADSL was down.  Never in my life did I have to deal with ADSL because I had dial up in 1998, then went to college where there was the Ethernet, then my parents got cable modem, which is what I switched to when I got my first apartment in 2003, getting speeds up to 15mb per second.  Here in Italy, on the two days I had ADSL, it was 3 mb, about the same as the Internet key.   . . which sometimes goes as low as .03 rendering loading email impossible.  Modern websites and applications can’t run on such a primitive system.  As I ran my speed tests, I saw that the GLOBAL average for Internet was 11 mb/second.  Italy falls around 3 or 4, giving them a D+ in the global Internet range.  The world, not the western world or high tech society . . . the world.  Italy is stuck in the 90s technologically, tho gratefully in the Medieval ages architecturally.  Ok, that’s not exactly right, we have some renaissance and some other random buildings, but the architecture here is quite beautiful.  Italy is gorgeous, and Genoa is right at the top of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in Italy . . . but there seems to be quite a price to pay for all this beauty.

Imagine my pure joy and elation at putting aside all this constant phone call, text message, phone company appointment nonsense and to move on with my life here in Italy with slow tho functioning Internet.  Nope, back to square one again, but this time way more pushy.  You literally have to fight for your right to anything in this country which has a very . . . lax . . . service industry.  I had to call 3 times (well, get colleagues who spoke Italian) just to get them to open a work order to fix the line.  But I have my bank card, and that’s progress.  I also visited the doctor and renewed my allergy prescription easily.  whew!  I wasn’t up for another hoop to jump through . . . my legs are tired enough from hiking up and down my mountain each day.  Again, the price for all the beauty.

In the meantime, sometimes my Internet key grabs a signal (as it is now) so I’m taking advantage and trying to update.  Coming next, photos of Oktoberfest.  I am also taking an online course for the International Baccalaureate (IB).  I wanted to be as prepared as possible as it’s my first time teaching it, so I asked my boss and he registered me.  There is work to do each day, though, and I need good high speed Internet, otherwise the modules won’t load.  Sigh . . . Italy, seriously, get with at least 2002 if you can’t get to 2012 with Internet.